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tumblr reading comprehension: electric boogaloo
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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It’s not about reading comprehension, it’s about the reader not understanding the unwritten parameters of the question. That the possibility that neither have greater value exists.
I recall one occasion where something similar happened to me back in middle school. We were learning about probability using dice rolls. One of the questions on the worksheet was (something like) “What is the best way to influence the probability of the dice roll outcome?”
When the question was posed to me I fully understood that there was no way to influence the probability, assuming no influence by external factors, the probability of a given outcome will always be equal. But the fact that the question was posed to me in this way led me to believe that this was not the answer the question was looking for. It implied that in fact there was a way to influence the result, so I got very frustrated in trying to come up with an answer which made sense. In this situation I felt that actually the question was wrong, and got upset that the task I had been set to answer it was impossible to complete correctly. When I realised that the true intent was just to get me to acknowledge that there was no way to influence the result, I felt betrayed by the framing of the question. I knew the answer the whole time, it was obvious, but the framing of the question misled me to believe that was not the intended answer.
The question in my case wasn’t actually an earnest question about probability, the pretext for is was deliberately false. There was no way for me to figure it out using better reading comprehension. The intent of the question can only be realised via comprehension of non-written concepts, essentially being able to recognise when someone is trying to throw you a curveball. It isn't quite the same as just recognising the path of the ball being thrown to you, because in that case it appears to be being thrown away from you.
If you examine the person replying person's responses, that's pretty much where they're at. The whole 'dude is expecting the answer to be their own views' thing is conjecture, what they're expecting is a view given an existing proposition that there is a view to take.
Dude, hate to break it to you, but that is one of the key skills of reading comprehension.
Damn, my ego from 20-something years ago is shattered. Anyway please, tell me more about how a key part of reading comprehension is actually comprehension of non-textual information ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Since you seem to be struggling to understand the concept, here's a few examples: math and science word problems, metaphor, subtext, allegory, koans, poetry, song lyrics, riddles, jokes, sarcasm.
Yeah, I'm struggling. That's a list of general concepts in literature, which isn't synonymous with a concept in reading comprehension like you're using it. I've also re-examined but can't see where any of these listed concepts appear in either the OP or the example I gave. It seems you're just trying to catch me out by pointing to an exception in a metaphor I gave to demonstrate my point rather than engaging with the point at all
Reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. If your point is about processing and understanding information that isn't present in the text, it isn't about reading comprehension. And in neither of the examined cases is anything present in the text where reading comprehension could serve to fill the gap in the respondent's external understanding.
I'm not saying it isn't a problem that the person in the meme didn't comprehend what was going on, or that I was right for my childhood response to a math question. I'm saying that someone going on to use the OP as a basis to go on to make a point about e.g. younger generations being less literate is notably wrong for several reasons.
They're wrong because it isn't to do with reading comprehension. They're wrong when you consider that the same point is made by every older generation about every younger generation for the past few centuries despite a continued uptrend in global literacy. And it's ironic that they're wrong making a point about poor reading comprehension as a result of failing to comprehend that the person building a strawman out of the initial meme respondent is talking out of their ass. Poor comprehension is a potential reading of the comment in question, but the person talking about them seeking to reinforce their bias jumped to that conclusion in bad faith, and now y'all in this thread are substantiating that without properly examining whether there's actually basis for that particular reading of their comment at all. And that my friend, is a failure of your reading comprehension. A deference to petty bickering under an illusion of being grounded in logic and literacy, arrived at via mental gymnastics
Lol. Spoken like a LLM struggling to convince us it understands, i.e. lots of words, little substance or insight.
Beep boop. Human's central point is that two unalike things are actually the same thing. Does not compute
Right because you'll never run into situations where someone says one thing but actually means something else
That's not what I meant. What I'm saying is that when someone is verbally saying something to you but means something else, that has nothing to do with reading comprehension. Literally neither of you are reading at all in that scenario as you put it. Can you explain what it has to do with reading other than being broadly related to communicating information?
If they were writing to you instead, and there was some characteristic about what they wrote which could function as a piece of information you could use to comprehend additional information and make deductions about what they wrote beyond the literal words on the page, then it would be related to reading comprehension. But that's not the case here, neither with the OP nor my example
This is where you are wrong.
I think you're perhaps mistaking a very broad and loose concept of comprehension generally for the concept of reading comprehension in the way it's used in the meme and my example, where it is has a defined meaning which indeed limits the scope of the concept to comprehension of things that are read. While perhaps not explicitly wrong for other purposes, for purposes of this conversation reading comprehension is the ability to read, process and understand text.
WTF is this gibberish? Bad AI chat bot.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you use a concept you don't understand as the basis for your opinion
There is effectively no difference between someone verbally saying something to you, and someone sending you that message via text. Even then, the initial context of this was a written test question. An inability to understand that a written question can have no correct answer would be a matter of reading comprehension by your own definition here.
To say it more explicitly, subtext is quite literally non-textual information contained within text, either written or spoken. The ability to understand subtext is directly linked with reading comprehension.
Sorry, I'm sure you're just being facetious and have already realised this, but I'll go ahead and sign off by pointing out the obvious that speech as a medium of information is inextricably linked to concepts such as tone, manner, body language. You can't just make shit up like "spoken text" and pretend written and verbal communication aren't fundamentally different concepts, gimme a break dude
Written and spoken communication are different things, but you can't pretend they aren't extremely closely linked. My point still stands—an ability to understand subtext is a factor of reading comprehension.
I am familiar with the concept of subtext, thanks. I think you've mistaken that what is incumbent upon you here is to demonstrate what subtext has been contained within the text as you put it, in either the OP or my example, that was missed.
I mean in the case of my old school memory I think you'll just have to indulge my recollection that there was none (in fact, that all subtext in that situation related to being in math class etc purposefully indicated that it was a genuine math question, by the teacher's design). But in the OP greentext parable, literally some text presented devoid of context, which actually is relevant in that it establishes that there is a closed loop of literary conventions in that text which can be analysed or 'comprehended' - what is the subtext?
In the greentext, the question is posed: which is better, small boobs or large boobs? Rather than explicitly telling the man "neither is better," the Great Philosopher uses a metaphor to help the man come to that understanding himself. The subtext is that it's an invalid question; despite their differences, neither is better, just as $30 in coins has the same monetary value as $30 in bills.
The ability to recognize when a question is itself invalid is important to reading comprehension, and you cannot fully understand a concept if you aren't capable of declining to take statements about it at face value. You may have read that it isn't possible to influence the roll of a die before that test, or you may have assumed that it isn't, but if simply seeing the question "how can you influence the roll of a fair die" makes you think that it must be possible, then you didn't understand that it isn't. Had you had better reading comprehension at that time, you may have been able to answer the question correctly without any further context needed. All you needed to do was not assume that the question had an answer.
Of course, that's not very appropriate for a math class. Better to teach students that in... Social studies? It's been such a long time since I've been in school, I can't even remember what class is meant to teach literacy.
Your interpretation of the subtext in the OP is predicated on context which does not appear in the text. Answering a question with a metaphor implies that the metaphor will demonstrate an answer to the question; nothing more. It does absolutely nothing AT ALL to suggest it is an invalid question; you've just made that up. The respondent being analysed has in fact recognised this subtext equally and their resulting lack of understanding has happened in spite of this.
In my math class example although the test question was a written question, I received it in person in math class in middle school in rural Australia during late 90s from a teacher and as a part of a syllabus I was familiar with. These are just some examples of the contextual clues which in combination with the text formed the subtext or the basis for my interpretation of it. There are other circumstances I've not mentioned because they are irrelevant to the point I was using the example to make, and it's none of anyone's business. That said, it is just plain ridiculous to argue about the subtext of a question paraphrased in recollection after decades as if my original comment has somehow given you a more accurate read on the experience I lived.
The metaphor attempts to lead the reader to the answer themselves. When the Great Philosopher asks which has more value, the reader should be able to answer that question even if the answer isn't written in the text. Of course, both $30 in bills and $30 in coins are worth exactly $30, despite the differences in their mass. Through the magic of reading comprehension, one can link that to the original question: despite their differences in mass, both are equally valuable, because both are breasts. The question was invalid.
Ironically, I'm having trouble parsing this. Can you rephrase it?
I used the word lieu incorrectly. The respondent has recognised the same subtext that is present and that you had recognised but they did not understand in spite of this, because it does not indicate what you're suggesting
I'm still a bit confused. Which respondent? The only three people in this line of comments are you, me, and the person talking about how most US adults don't read at a high school level. Do you mean thatguyfromthatwebsite? He literally doesn't recognize the subtext—he remains under the assumption that because a question with two answers was posed, one of those two answers must be right.
The respondent in the actual post, their assumption is that the metaphor would demonstrate the answer to the proposed question, which for many readers it did. It didn't for thatguy, and this is explained by the following respondents in the meme as being a result of thatguy's existing biases. The reality is that all readers came to whatever conclusion they did based primarily on their existing biases, like for an example a bias toward memes which equally represent big and small boobs. Because there is no complete literal interpretation of the parable as it is written.
If it were a matter of the shared social goal & responsibility of general comprehension between reader & writer (& other readers), there are a few clues which should have suggested to thatguy that both sizes being equal was the intent. There was some missed responsibility on the part of the writer to ensure clarity there too. Of course, no one is perfect and that's why most people just subjectively fill in whatever gaps exist, usually subconsciously. But that's not reading comprehension. The fcat you are albe to raed tihs sntenece and udnrsetnad it is not raednig cmoerpehrnison, any more than when I misspeak to you and you understand what I meant. That's just science. Neurology and free association. A concept fully divorced from reading comprehension. Maybe people want a better term for it now and thought 'reading comprehension' made sense, but it's already taken and means something else.
In reading comprehension, it doesn't matter how confusing or not the parable is, or whether the reader truly understands the writer's perspective once they've finished the text. All that matters is the reality of the text. If it is a text, there is some literary convention in it. Objectively you can understand it or not, and reading comprehension is a way to measure this.
The context I was referring to is the assumed purpose of the Great Philosopher's use of the metaphor & the assumed scope of the comparison between bills and coins to be of their representative money denomination only. You have acknowledged in your explanation that both are equally valuable despite their differences in their mass, but this same qualification is not included in the OP and that's the source of the confusion. After the difference is mentioned in their penultimate question, the word 'but' is used as a soft indication of an ultimate answer converse to the previous answer, coins, which have greater mass. In the text and subtext, the use of this word is the first and only indication whatsoever of the Great Philosopher's implication and answer. But with this info alone it still is still equally possible that the Great Philosopher's point is that both $30 of bills and coins are of equal value and therefore, both big and small boobs are of equal value; or that bills subjectively have greater value as a result of their lower mass and therefore that small boobs are greater in value than big boobs.
This is not further clarified in the text. You can use your relevant formative experiences to figure out the intended point, probably more than 50% of the time. But if you posted this on a small boob enthusiast forum, everyone there would understand this meme to be justifying their enthusiasm about small boobs.
I mean, sometimes questions have assumed context that make it harder to understand or answer correctly. I don't think how money works is an obscure topic among contemporary Internet using people.
I think "rhetorical questions" are either a subcategory or close relative of reading comprehension. When someone says "who watches the watchmen?" they're not looking for a literal "Bob, cuz that's his hobby, got a police scanner and everything" answer. You're supposed to think about it and make some connections.
Rhetorical questions in the style of the OP go back thousands of years. Being unfamiliar with this concept is not great. Maybe not a reading comprehension problem, strictly, but poor literacy.
And for your dice question is "weight the dice" not an acceptable answer?
A close relative, sure. But to point to reading comprehension and go on to elocute about that would not have basis in this example, in my view. The crux of the issue literally isn't written, as you say, it is assumed. The point being it is an implication from fully external understanding. It isn't that there is an inference to be made or dots to be connected based on notions only vaguely referenced by the text, e.g that the value could be equal / that dice rolls being equal is a valid answer. Because there is no vague reference in the text. Correct understanding in either case fully depends on understanding of concepts outside the text. The person with the best reading comprehension in the land would be unable to comprehend the text without that external understanding.
To put it more succinctly, if comprehension is understanding stuff, reading comprehension is understanding stuff based on what is written, right? The issue being that in this case the lack of comprehension is about something that wasn't written. It is a comprehension issue unspecific to reading.
On the other hand life is full of those kinds of "bad questions": poorly framed questions, leading ones, arguments in bad faith, etc. You're going to encounter them on future tests and in real life, and often the stakes are higher.
That question might have been shit at teaching about probability but it was a far more important lesson in disguise.
For sure, I'm more pushing back on using this example as a basis to go on to make a point about reading comprehension. It's quite ironic that the issue isn't really about reading comprehension, don't you think?
Even though you understood it as "influence the dice without external phenomena", and it may be stated elsewhere in the worksheet, the question doesn't explicitly state "no external phenomena". Just weight the dice.
After voicing my specific problems with the question (effectively answering it in the way it was designed to be answered in the process), I was rebuffed by the teacher because this protest was not in the form of a written answer on the sheet. They were dead set on me writing the specific non-answer they thought of and marking anything else incorrect, regardless of whether understanding of probability was demonstrated. I, like most of my classmates, contrived some nonsense answer such as "the cutouts for the number markings on each side slightly imbalance the dice", and was marked wrong.